Get ready!Next Tuesday 4/12 marks the launch of FERN’s Hot Farm podcastA four-part series about the effects of climate change on farmers, and your food. Hot Farm, hosted by Eve Abrams, takes you to the Midwest to hear farmers talk about how climate affects them and to see what they are doing to counter it.
In the meantime, we continue to publish print stories. Here’s a rundown.
Good fire is returning to eastern U.S. forests, grasslands and forests
Scientists, conservation groups, land management agencies, and indigenous groups are working together to restore fire to fire-adapted ecosystems throughout the United States. Fire, advocates argue is a crucial solution to address a multitude of pressing and growing problems, including biodiversity loss, wildfire risk and climate change, human and environmental health, and many others. The absence of fires for many ecosystems in the eastern United States has been devastating. Fire-adapted trees such as oaks, hickories and pines used to dominate forests. Now, these forests are dominated by less wildlife-supporting species. Overcrowded trees that grow in woods without regular fire have reduced the biodiversity of the understory and increased the risk for blazes. Gabriel Popkin contributed to the story.
The British Columbia forests are being threatened by controversial biofuel
Last year, a peer-reviewed study found that British Columbia’s inland rainforestwas endangered and could experience ecological collapse within a decade. This forest once totaled over 1.3 million hectaresand it is home to 2,400 plant species, many of them rare, and wildlife such as wolves, wolverines, and southern mountain caribou.The study also found that 95 percent of the region’s core habitat, forest located more than 100 meters from a road, had been lost since 1970. The wood pellet industry has been devouring wood at an alarming rate, shipping pellets to Europe as well as Asia to be burned for electricity. Michelle Connolly, an ecologist, says that we were fighting for the last pieces. The story by Brian Barth was produced with The Walrus, one of Canada’s largest general interest magazines.
Big Techs food-delivery apps are facing a grassroots revolt
“At the start of the pandemic, food delivery apps, including the ‘Big 3’ Grubhub, Uber Eats, and DoorDash were hailed as saviors, facilitating a takeout boom meant to keep restaurants and their staffs working,” reports Dean Kuipers in FERN’s latest story, published with Mother Jones. “But eateries were quickly confronted by a harsh reality: These Silicon Valley and Wall Streetbacked firms, which together dominate 93 percent of the market share nationwide, are designed to scrape money out of local businesses sucking up a combined $9.5 billion in revenues in 2020 alone and send it to shareholders. Kuipers says that restaurant owners in cities across the country are fighting back and forming local-delivery cooperatives to keep out third-party entrants.